‘Runaway Island’: Where Is The Real Gullah Sea Island? TV One’s Movie Starring Lorraine Toussaint Premieres Tonight

Runaway Island is the latest original TV One movie that is slated to air on the cable channel tonight. Acted by a strong, star-studded cast, Runaway Island will transport viewers to a faraway land on the lush and exotic grounds of Isle du Soleil, an exclusive resort on Gullah Sea Island. Visually, audiences can expect a beautiful, strong cast that brings the script alive. The TV One original movie also offers rich and colorful cinematography that is sure to please the viewer.

Produced by G.R. Entertainment Group and directed by Dianne Houston, Runaway Island stars Lorraine Toussaint as Naomi Holloway, Aisha Hinds as Lara Cook-Nordholm, Thomas Q. Jones as Raphael Burrows, Erica Tazel as Vonda Hines, Leon Thomas III as Evan Holloway, Tom Wright as Raymond Tepper, A. Russell Andrews as Rev. Clinton Hines, Branton Box as Erick Nordholm, Melanie Liburd as Kira Geoffries, and Herizen F. Guardiola as Freya Nordholm.

TV One’s Runaway Island centers around three sets of troubled guests who seek to run away from their problems. In tonight’s premiere, we meet the beautiful and distinguished, Naomi, a Capitol Hill grandmother, who comes to the island to escape a growing scandal involving her college-aged grandson, Evan. As she tries to connect with Evan, she meets the handsome Raymond Tepper, and an unexpected passionate romance develops between them.

Rev. Clinton Hines and his wife, Vonda, are grieving the loss of their dead daughter, Abby, who died six months ago due to complications of pneumonia. As the first lady of the church, Vonda strives to keep it all together, but she soon realizes that she and her husband need to get away in order to properly grieve their little girl and sort out the problems in their marriage.

Next we meet, Raphael Burrows, the gorgeous, dark-skinned NFL player, whose muscle-toned body is the talk of the resort. Raphael arrives on the island to find the love of his life, Kira Geoffries, a socialite who abruptly left him without explanation. Though she isn’t excited to see him, Raphael does everything in his power to manifest his love for her, in the hopes that she will become his wife.

Lara Cook-Nordholm and Erick Nordholm are a white and black interracial couple who live with their teenage daughter, Freya, on the idyllic Gullah Sea island. Lara and Erick busy themselves by managing the Isle du Soleil resort as they watch their guests’ lives fall apart. Though there isn’t much they can do to help them, the Nordholms are hopeful that their troubled guests will find healing on the island and gain a deeper understanding of who they are.

Will these troubled families be able to sort through their relationship difficulties and deep emotional wounds in order to build a stronger relationship with their loved ones? Watch Runaway Island on TV One tonight at 8/7 central. Also, be sure to revisit this page to tell us how you liked the movie.

The fictitious Gullah Sea Island offers a glimpse as to what could have possibly inspired the movie. The word Gullah describes a real language and real people who descended from African slaves. Today, it is still spoken by natives of St. Helena and in the Sea Island resorts of South Carolina and coastal parts of Georgia.

Runaway Island was filmed during the hurricane season in Point Clear, Alabama. Point Clear is a beautiful resort area that has a bay where the last African slave ship descended in 1860. Unlike in the movie and in South Carolina’s true Sea Islands, Point Clear, Alabama, has few relics, if any, that show that Africans or the Gullah language ever existed there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq2jBGTU7Kc

[Photo Credit: Facebook]